Upon the Road of No Returning
by Marchwriter
Summary: "Farewell" is the hardest word to acknowledge between friends because you know you don't want them to fare anywhere without you. Aragorn and Haldir part in Lothlórien as the War of the Ring darkens their horizons.


**Author's Notes**: Special thanks to Antares Star for editing this in a time crunch. Love between friends is the slipperiest emotion to pin down on paper. It doesn't lend itself to definition. Emily Dickinson put it best when she wrote, "It is shelter to speak to you."

Unfortunately, I am no Emily Dickinson and can only offer what I can.

**Disclaimer**: I am merely playing in Tolkien's sandbox. I have pillaged the chapters of the Fellowship's stay in Lórien to render this story truthfully though none of it is.

**Special Dedication**: To all of you who are friends, and to the many smiles you grant, the tears you soothe and the memories you provide those who are lucky enough to call themselves the same.

Upon the Road of No Returning

By: Marchwriter

"He cannot simply refuse!" Orophin's voice, confined only by the narrow walls of their shared quarters, was rapidly ascending to an indignant squawk that made greenlings on the borders jump to attention and long-suffering brothers search for somewhere to sit.

"I did not say he ought not to attend them. I simply do not see why one of the white-cloaked guards cannot." Though slighter and leaner than either of his remaining family, Rúmil, fortunately, had their mother's unassailable patience.

A blessing when his opponent was Orophin's staunch opposition.

The two brothers invariably clashed—the result of centuries under the same roof and almost as many apart. Too often of late their rivalry had taken on a harder, more desperate, edge, distinct from the old rivalries that had consumed their youths when the Shadow was but a vague and half-forgotten wisp on the horizon.

Haldir kneaded his forehead to stave off a vexing headache. His brothers, thankfully, seemed to have forgotten his presence. Or perhaps they hadn't and speaking of him as if he weren't there revealed just how little choice he had in the matter.

"He is already here and already known to them. Why give another his place?"

"I have no desire to argue this with you. All I said was—"

"I heard perfectly well what you said, but they came to us tired and worn and grief-stricken. They are not the enemy nor are they worthy of such chariness…Nay, do not shake your head at me, Rúmil! You are truly afraid—"

"Even Legolas' well-sung tune could not chase that shadow from my heart. There is some evil on them, Orophin. I felt it even if you did not—"

Abruptly excusing himself from bearing further witness to this maelstrom he already had too little tolerance for, Haldir shouldered between his arguing brethren and strode out of their talan.

February's pensive wind gentled the stabbing at his temples and the voices behind him receded to muted snarling. A lantern-light, left carelessly lit from the night before, gave forth a feeble glimmer as he smoothed melting frost from its panes. Though dew still jeweled the lawns here and water trickled faintly to his ears as if it were yet early spring, snow would benight the fences within a fortnight; when he'd left frost rimed the swift Celebrant's banks. Even now, the wardens taking vigil there suffered from chilled hands and leather too stiff with frost to serve until it had been worked and warmed.

And they had work enough already.

Recalling the wisps of pale smoke he had seen rising in Dimrill Dale, his heart lurched with longing to be back out on his marches. Cheerless meals, surly men and uncomfortable bedding would be a just and even generous recompense if the duty that awaited him here could be at all forsworn.

But wishing did not make it so, and he knew, even in the wishing, that he would have come anyway if it did.

Other lanterns flickered into brighter life among the boughs. The city's denizens were waking and Haldir could hear the whisper of doors opening and shutting and voices calling greetings to familiars through the foliage. His keen ears also caught the surge of angry tones from inside his quarters as his brothers emerged behind him, still in full tilt at one another's breasts, though their barbs remained words instead of blades. Though if he let things go on, he might yet have to part them with his saber.

"Rúmil would have you skulk with the maids and peacocks of the Royal Guard, playing errand-runner to the Lord and Lady." Unabated vitriol roiled through Orophin's rigid countenance as he stalked out onto the porch.

"Keep your spiteful words for yourself, Orophin!" Rúmil's renowned patience had clearly been worsted by his elder's indefatigable siege. "I alone seem to consider our brother's heart, not only his position which your swan-breasted pride rides on like a ship with a full wind."

"A plague on your querulous nagging! _Silence_, the both of you!" The captain's strident bark overlaid by an elder brother's vexation had the desired effect. Both Rúmil and Orophin fell silent at once as if their tongues had been cut.

Haldir resumed his contemplation of Caras Galadhon with an air of affected patience. After a moment of listening to the unseen water, he addressed his truculent middle brother first whose unrelieved invective all but visibly seethed under his skin.

"Even if the damasked silks of royalty mantled your shoulders instead of a soldier's wool, you should find it no shame to perform even midden work for your liege-lady." He didn't need to look to see Orophin's grimace at the gently pointed rebuke though he had, for once, taken his eldest brother's command to heart and said nothing. "And as for my welfare in their presence, you seldom require a prompt to remind me that I place far more value on my pride than my skin."

"Less seldom was your wont to admit such a thing," Rúmil came to his side and rested his forearms on the railing.

While Haldir kept his eyes firm on foliage patterning in the wind, he could feel his youngest brother's gaze considering him. That probing regard, keen as winter sunlight through glass, had always been able to see what was so often obscured to others—even to Orophin: the haunting troubles and reticent shadows. Perhaps because Rúmil could not bear to dissemble or hide the depth of his own sentiments, the Valar granted him some inner sight that allowed him to divine the hearts of others. Haldir had known only one other who saw so clearly into him.

"He has changed you." Rúmil's smile was soft and a little too understanding.

A sidelong glance. "Were it not for Estel, I would have the peace of death to spare me your badgering."

He had meant it jestingly, but a familiar furrow appeared between Rúmil's brows and Orophin's intractable spine withered, his face draining of frustration.

The flame of his jocularity extinguished in the cold of his brothers' somberness. They knew what Estel meant to him. What this parting between them meant. "Let us hope all his work remains after he is gone."

"The Fellowship departs soon," Rúmil said unnecessarily. "What will you say to him?"

"I had not thought on it." Haldir watched the trail of his fingers over the railing's grooves, slick and cold with dew.

"Tell him it is time to part," Orophin suggested, folding his arms across his chest and resting his lower back against the railing. "Wish him the best and have done. Do not mince words with him, and linger not over it—thus your parting will be made easier. It must be done like removing an arrow. Cleanly and completely."

Haldir wasn't sure if he winced or not, but Rúmil shot over his head, "Would you truly be so cold to so long a friend? You cannot even take leave of acquaintances without wringing their hands to strings."

Orophin countered with stubbornly folded arms. "Estel is not an acquaintance? We have known him…what? A handful of decades? Sixty? Seventy at most?"

Rúmil's contemptuous snort at this insensitive remark and a sharp squeeze on Haldir's shoulder bestowed little comfort, and the words that followed did nothing to appease the sense of dread gnawing tenaciously at the pit of his stomach.

"He goes into great peril, not for his own sake, but for us all," said his youngest brother, "Tell him you shall miss him. Tell him how much his friendship has meant to you. Tell him you will see him again. Even if you won't. His heart needs to be strengthened in this dark hour, not diminished."

The lamps hanging overhead were dimming as ascending sunlight stole through green roofs, dappling the ground in rich and vibrant earth-tones. Birds trilled on every branch. The dew had more than half burned away. He had to go. _The deed that is long delayed is oft the most difficult to bear._

He started away from the railing and the questioning gazes of his brothers. "Rúmil, return to the marches posthaste; make sure our scouts all come in and hear their news yourself. I want to know what moves in the Dale as soon as I return. Orophin, go…finish whatever it is you came here to do."

"Aye, Haldir." Orophin stood shoulder to shoulder with Rúmil now that he had stepped from between them, consternation and quarrel set aside if not forgotten under the new burden of sharing a brother's impending separation from a friend.

Clouds of leaves mottled his path with their darker reflections as he descended the spiraling stairs, passing through several flets. He had traversed these stairs hundreds of feet above the forest floor as many times and never felt any ill effects from the height. But for an incalculable reason, he paused midway down, fingers clutching at the banister tight enough to grind his bones into damp wood. Vertigo, a passing moment, that was all. Lingering aftermath of the wine last night explained away the swimming of his vision, the humming in his ears, his heartbeat's erratic thuds.

Certainly not nerves. That was foolish.

He released the railing and did not touch it again. From the ground, he glimpsed the underside of the guards' talan he had just left, almost hidden in the leaves and very much overshadowed by the high chamber of the Lord and Lady above it. The murmuring water had blossomed to a full-throated song that Haldir could not help resenting slightly. Courage is drawn from many wells, but the captain of the northern fences found his usually generous springs at a wan and sullen trickle.

Straightening his spine for the illusion of determination if not the actuality, he rounded the great chamber's trunk, a massive, grey wall whose permanence lasted only as long as one chose to remain within its shadow. The morning wind that had balmed him on the porch raked through him as he stepped onto a broad lawn.

Not a stone's throw away, the white fountain splashed and flickered with diamond-lights.

One of the hobbits whose thin face was shadowed by the memory of an old and dark wound was the first to notice him, and the marchwarden caught his own features tightening in surprise at the uncertain but exuberant wave that followed the flash of recognition in those haunted eyes.

But the other members of the company when they saw him—though Haldir carefully did not meet the gaze of the tallest man—seemed not as eager for his company as Frodo whose tight mouth and anxious eyes bore the signs of a man impatient to be going. He felt the pull of the Ring and remaining in Lórien would bring him no delight, only delay which made the Quest all the harder to bear on shoulders unaccustomed to so cumbersome a weight.

Haldir would have pitied him if Frodo's will had not blatantly countermanded his own. With a stormcrow's mantle clinging heavily about him, he threw his shoulders down and back to bear up the weight and descended towards the waiting Fellowship.

* * *

Unlike the other elven realms such as Imladris, which was more peaceful refuge than fortress, and Mirkwood, more martial fortress than refuge, the City of Trees was truly a mingling of the two. Its deep fosse, high hedges and the power of the Lady kept peril without, and allowed days long ago lost to antiquity to live anew in serenity.

But for all the quietude and ease it leant to the senses, it did not bestow its equal on the mind. The often too-peaceful environs quelled normal speech, nevermind reluctant, and Haldir found himself in no mood to discuss what he wished with Estel as the Fellowship trailed no more than a few paces behind. His mood seemed catching for he noted that none of them spoke either but went with bowed heads and understandably weighted hearts as they passed out of the gates and onto the white bridge that spanned the fosse once more.

Haldir's mind was far from the sunlight attenuating through the close-knit leaves or the silver mists steaming from the ground, parted by his long strides. The sun, nestled in her jeweled sky, was a cruel and fickle lady for she bestowed her brightest rays on days that should be dark and louring. Too often, it was her rays that kissed the faces of the dead and illuminated their grotesque shapes in all their foul detail.

He saw them again on the Dagorlad as he walked through the dappled shade: faces of friends limed in stark clarity, the spatter of blood following the arch of a high brow, fingernails clean and clipped short, clothing crusted with red clay and dusted fine with ash. They were not strangers and sometimes still followed him into his dreams: their graceless figures sprawled in postures where the final stroke had found them, sinking beneath the muck of the Dagorlad. Eyes glowing green as the marsh-lights claimed them

He could picture Estel's death like that. Dark hair splayed and dripping across his face. Clothing deranged and straining under the force of bloating skin. Face stretched, waxy. Eyes and cheeks, deep-sunken, blowflies already settling at the corners of his lips while fell gases mingled in the air above him with the gnats. He wondered anxiously if he would have to speak a eulogy were news ever to be brought as far as Lórien.

He shook his head so hard, his hair rippled down his shoulder blades like a shiver. What a thing to think when the man walked and breathed beside him! If the marchwarden attuned his senses to it hard enough, he could hear a high, keen noise humming from the ranger like light—blood rushing through his veins.

Aragorn looked in better health than when they had parted last in Celeborn's chamber over a moon ago; his cheekbones had softened; the bruises of weariness under his eyes had vanished. The broken angles of anger the Ring's temptation had torn across his visage had healed. While graver than youth had once made him, Aragorn's smile was the same. The sunlit leaves burnished hints of silvery threads near his temples as bright as glass.

It was that sight that made Haldir curse the keenness of his own. For the first time in his long life, he felt old, looking upon the age of the man, remembering his youth so little time ago. Always, he remained like a stone bedded in the midst of a stream, bearing the water's unrelenting force and the lighter brush of a spring's leaf against its flanks. But a stone did not count years. Did not ache for their passing. Did not regret the leaf's departure once the current tumbled it away. The realization threatened to unman him.

With every silent footstep that brought them closer to the banks of the Silverlode, the more conscious Haldir became of time gliding slowly but surely away from him. The infrequency and spontaneity of his meetings with Estel over the years had fostered an odd constancy, a comforting pattern, the long absences only sharpening the sweet taste of reunion. They had had years, years that he admitted he had taken for granted since he owned so many already.

But now, whichever way the Quest fell out, their years were numbered.

The coming days were earmarked by the specter of death. Haldir did not disillusion himself, as some of the younger wardens did, with dreams of the Shadow crumbling forever and elven lands being restored to the peace they had known before the cruel Maia's coming—as if the dead who would buy that peace would rise with a touch. None would know perfect peace when this war was over, for good or ill.

Something ached in the region of his stomach like an old battle wound, and he quickened his pace in an effort to forget it.

The noon sun glistened on Anduin's sluggish, brown waters as the company emerged at last onto a long lawn tapering down towards the water's edge. Birds spun and wove in and out of the branches overhead. Golden leaves danced as the Celebrant's down-current swept them on to an unknown destination.

"A beautiful morning," Legolas sighed as if stepping out of the grip of the woods had freed his tongue. He shaded his eyes against the sun as he looked down towards the narrow pier where the grey boats rocked. Though a winsome smile lightened his face and the angle of his shoulders bespoke of confidence in their mission, neither quite dispelled the shadows ghosting through his cerulean eyes. Mithrandir's death weighed heavily still.

As he watched the younger elf, the sunlight gleaming like a golden blade in his hair, Haldir was suddenly struck by the fact that he had not even considered saying goodbye to Legolas. He had known Thranduil's son even longer than Aragorn. Yet though the thought of Legolas' death disagreed with him, he did not fear it as much as Aragorn's. Those for whom death was not a natural course of life did not often think of it when considering their friends and dear ones.

But those for whom it was…Whether or not Aragorn survived the journey to Mordor, death's hand never quite withdrew from him. When it finally caressed him and drew him close, he was lost to the fate of Men, which, if the Wise among the Eldar knew, Haldir, at least, did not.

He wanted to tell Legolas something short and pithy, something that would amount to an order for him to take care of the ranger in not so many words. But judging by the stern set of his jaw and the unwavering regard he laid on the man's back as the ranger saw to the boats, Legolas had already rested that charge firmly in his hands. It eased Haldir a little.

"I will see that he comes to no harm." Legolas echoed his face's expression and the captain's own thoughts so precisely that Haldir wondered if there were a little prescience in Thranduil's blood.

On an impulse he chose not to define as his youngest brother's influence working on him, he patted the younger elf's cheek, a rough, almost paternal gesture. "May your woods blossom upon your return, young one."

The rarity of such affection made Legolas blink, a little half-grin quirking the side of his mouth the elder warrior had touched. A hand to his heart, he returned the ancient Silvan benediction with words Haldir didn't hear.

Aragorn was striding towards them.

Panic seized such tight hold of the marchwarden that he, though renowned for his implacability before the enemy, almost retreated before his friend's advance. Neither fear of torment in the dark or death in battle had ever balked him as watching Aragorn approach did now. Only through summoning a wealth of aplomb did he manage to will himself to absolute stillness.

As if sensing his diffidence, Aragorn slowed, glancing uncertainly at Legolas who merely gave him a small nod and made to take his own place in the boats. Haldir watched him go with regret.

He was too still. He stood almost at attention but could not find the wherewithal to relax even the smallest fraction despite the hesitancy in Aragorn's face. _What was the proper discourse when friends parted, perhaps for the last time? Jest and rib mercilessly as they always had? Or eclipse the banter with a more solemn avowal of eternal love and loyalty? _He had tried both. And neither proved a balm when one of two fell to sword, axe or arrow-shot.

Or worse.

But saying nothing, as he was doing, did a disservice to both of them.

He forced his immovable legs to carry him within arms' reach and brusquely tugged straight a crease in Aragorn's newly-bestowed cloak. His fingers lingered over the grey cloth, smoothing the already millpond-smooth silk.

"The garments of Lórien become you."

The ranger's mouth curled amusedly, but the telling flicker in his grey eyes betrayed his own incapacity to bridge this wall of awkward silence suddenly pushing between them.

The marchwarden rubbed the ridge of his brow hard with his fingers. That blasted headache had returned, and his stomachache sharpened acutely to a gutting, as if he were being eviscerated with a breadknife. To ask Aragorn to stay was a pointless and selfish indulgence. And even if circumstance and the man's own wisdom allowed him to remain in Lórien there was no surety of safety even here. But here, at least, they would be able to wait out the days side by side and charge into the shadows together.

"All our hopes rest on you and the Halfling. You are the standard bearer before all our armies. Our sword arms and spirits are yoked to yours. Even to death," was all he said.

"So long as your stomachs remain in their proper places, or else I fear the _lembas_ will be stretched thin before the journey starts." Aragorn laughed blithely, and Haldir with him.

In the somewhat brokered atmosphere, they joined the rest of the company and the elves who had already strapped down packs, gear and unwilling hobbits. Haldir heard himself speak words of caution upon entering the boats, but he was ever conscious of Aragorn at his shoulder.

The man did not immediately follow his comrades, and the look upon his face was of a man struggling with a question he did not want answered, but he asked it anyway after all the others had entered the boats and were waiting upon him.

"Will you and I speak again before we depart?"

Haldir did not take his eyes from the boats' keels as if measuring how they lay in the water and whether they would carry their burdens willingly. "I am recalled to the borders as soon as may be." He did not wish to prolong this.

Aragorn nodded thoughtfully, still remaining on the bank, still waiting…for what? What did he expect Haldir to say? Did he expect words of encouragement and courage? Of victory's surety? Or did he expect a last farewell?

If either, he asked far more of the elf's forbearance than Haldir would willingly countenance.

Even so, who, Elf, Man or Dwarf, could look upon this man, this king of kings who resembled Elendil in all but face, whose very likeness bespoke Númenor glorious before its prideful fall and not love him or grieve for his going? Who could not have the full heart of a vassal for his lord beating loud in his chest merely upon sight of him? Who would not be proud to name him brother and honor his sacrifice for all of them until the end of days?

But it was not in him to say any of this. In place of words, he dipped his head and touched a hand to his breast, a hum more than a beat throbbing beneath his fingertips.

"_Namárië, Elessar_."

He did not let the ranger so much as return the farewell but stalked up the bank and into the trees. He did not slow until the dense thickets concealed the banks of Anduin behind a verdant wall, his resolve faltering with his footsteps. His breath hissed faster through his gritted teeth from more than exertion. His heart fluttered. His palms were sweating away the suede of his breeches as he scoured them on his thighs.

Again, he saw the telltale mud rising, eyes glowing green, a pale hand with sword fingers missing curled halfway round a broken blade. He squeezed his eyes shut, but that only illumined the image in bloodier light. He wanted to move. He wanted to run. He wanted to rend the image to pieces—with his fingernails if he had to—until no verisimilitude remained to it.

Instead, his eyes snapped open, his vision cleared, and with a rush of breath, he forcibly expelled all the air and sour fear from his lungs. He looked up. The sun was still high.

The hythe flickered like a white tongue of flame on the brink of the water. The Fellowship was just stepping into their boats once more, laden and buoyed with the Lady's gifts. She herself waited on the shore, surrounded by her people, a white and queenly figure amidst drabber greys and greens. Though her grave eyes did not turn to him, he could sense a tingle in the air, a soothing hand reaching across the space between them.

At first, he wasn't certain if Estel heard his short, shrill whistle over the bustle of embarking for the man slung his pack into the bottom of the boat and took up Sam's, but then a green brooch flashed at his throat as his head swiveled in surprise. He spoke a quiet word to Legolas over his shoulder and began climbing the bank towards the thicket. Haldir would have found the smile on his face insufferably smug if he hadn't been so relieved.

But even relief at the man's appearance did not prepare him for so ebullient an embrace as Aragorn caught him round the neck with one arm, the other circling about his back.

Haldir was too shocked to do more than grunt as the man's newly-sheathed sword hilt caught him a jarring thud between the ribs. He almost inhaled the ranger's dusky hair at the flare of pain and tried to step back, but the arms around him only cinched tighter at his voiceless protest.

"Ever have you been my boon companion on too many dark journeys." The language of Aragorn's childhood, blurred only a little by his long sojourns among Men, fell easily from his lips. However, his voice sounded muffled. Haldir would have thought him suddenly afflicted with rheum, but for the fact that the ranger's bristly lips were close enough to scour skin from his neck.

The man still didn't let go. "But now, the shadows will stretch too long, and we can only hope that the beacon of Eärendil will brighten them for us in this hour. It was more than gladness to share such years with you, however brief they may have seemed in your eyes. I have not earned so great a guerdon. And can only hope to do so in the days to come for the sake of returning to you and all that I love in honor."

The words branded his heart as he knew they would. Taking the man by the shoulders, he pushed until the hold on him reluctantly relinquished. Aragorn gazed at him with eyes that bore, beneath the sorrow of parting, unspeakable hope and a determination to set forth on his path from which only death would turn him aside.

Haldir cleared his throat roughly as if shards of glass had lodged there. "My ribs, at least, will not soon forget you—considering the bruises will take several days to heal first."

"Then I should have squeezed harder and broken something, so your elvish memory would remember me the longer."

The elf's lips twitched in a truer smile, but even so, the words would not come. Swallowing bile, he ventured what had heretofore only wisped through his mind as insubstantial as air and unspoken as private thought: the notion that rent every belief of himself as a dedicated soldier of Lórien into quivering rags. That one treacherous confession he had not dared voice aloud to himself—much less to his brothers.

"I would come with you…"

A swift, terse shake of that dark head stilled words spoken far too late to impact the course of their destinies now. "The Valar have laid our paths before our feet already. It is my part to go on. To aid Minas Tirith…or Frodo…whatever decision befalls me when I reach that crossroads."

"And it is mine to remain," Haldir realized, the heavy blow of disappointment all the harder to bear for foreknowing his request, nay plea, was rebuked before its complete voicing. His hands slid loosely from the grey cloak and fell limp at his sides. "To shore up the bulwarking either in hopes of an unforeseen dawn…or for the twilight's last defense."

"Maybe it will be the last. But that is no reason to lose hope." Lines at the corners of Aragorn's eyes, lines the elf had never noticed before, arced upwards with his lips, "You were never satisfied unless there were orc necks for hewing."

Haldir smiled, but it was a far cry either from his usual smirk or his evanescent grin. The ice-blown shores of the Helcaraxë against his bare flesh would not have stirred in him the anguish that fell upon him now in the face of his most beloved (and often-thought _only_) friend.

"The day will come when you and I will sit again in the shadows of green leaves, exchanging stories free of old grief and pain and listening to the morning blazon with song."

"Not in Lórien will that be. Spring will not come again to the Golden Wood. With this parting, our winter has come at last, and the choice for many will come: to stay until all that they knew and loved fades beyond memory or to take that final ship to a land that has never been their home."

"It grieves me to force such a choice on you."

"Nevertheless, it is one that must be made in the end. You bear little fault for that."

"Whatever you decide, you will come to my wedding first won't you? I have always wanted a wedding on Midsummer Eve." The ranger's wistful eyes scanned the riverbanks; he was already far away, walking in other woods, or perhaps even wandering to the black plains where his doom and the dooms of so many others would be cast.

"If we both live to see such happy times."

Leaning forward slightly, Haldir slid his hands up through the man's unruly hair as if he were but a stripling yet and tilted their faces close until their foreheads nearly met. It was an intimate gesture he had never hitherto bestowed on the man, and Aragorn's eyes stretched, unblinking with surprise. The handspan that had once existed between their heights had vanished somewhere in forgotten groves.

Haldir forced himself to hold that grey gaze in a long, straight stare that lengthened beyond memory. Afterward, he did not recall quite what it was that passed between them. He only remembered his heart, too full and thick for words, choking his throat…his long hands buried in warm, dark hair threaded with silver…and those eyes…Those eyes had once opened on the world, guileless and honest as the first day of spring. The eyes that had seen into him more deeply than any other: that had transformed a soldier's war-torn bitterness and remorse into peace, gentled the rancor of self-inflicted isolation with the possibility of new friendship, and teased ancient disillusionment into blossoming hope.

Autumn had encroached on spring's un-weathered cheek and lined those eyes.

What had happened to their summer?

Already he could feel winter's chill seeping into his fingertips buried in that thick hair, but he let them grow cold. Aragorn's stare did not once waver from his as if he saw all that passed through the elf's mind. That unyielding yet sorrowing regard felled him. The marchwarden's heart overbrimmed. He could not bear his soul's utter baring like this. He dropped his eyes and hands, but Aragorn caught one of the latter up and pressed his callus-rough fingers against an equally rough palm.

"_The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began_…" he half-chanted, half-spoke, gripping hard.

Haldir closed his eyes.

They shook hands which seemed clumsy and foreign after their embrace. Estel's hand was warm and firm, his cold and clammy by comparison. And though he could claim no foresight himself, he thought maybe it wasn't Estel he had pictured fallen on the field of honor.

Aragorn withdrew and fetched an oar. Stepping nimbly back into the boat, he ignored Sam's panic over the violent swaying the ranger's movements provoked and dug the oar into the bank. The Silverlode's swift current captured the boats almost instantly and nosed them out past the tongue towards the Great River.

The marchwarden was neither a milksop nor a lovelorn maiden to watch and weep until the boats carrying dear ones blurred on the distant horizon. But in the instant before he turned away, the brown Anduin hazed ever so slightly as if with mist unburned and even the sun's glints off a disappearing wake shone too brightly.

Awareness of a presence watching him under the trees brought his head around sharply to pin the intruder with an eagle's hard and suspicious stare. "What do you here? You said you had business elsewhere in the city today."

"So I did." Orophin merely rested his shoulders on a mallorn trunk at his brother's piqued demand. "I have just parted from a dear friend. That burden is a heavy one when walking back to the marches. Alone."

"You thought_ I_ would be lonely?" Haldir threw a cursory glance over his shoulder. The roan and misty lands beyond Lothlórien had already swallowed up the elf-boats. Anduin sparkled under a noon sun, undisturbed, as if they had never been.

"Did I say that? That doesn't sound like what I said." Orophin tilted his head slightly, his equivalent of a shrug. "You must be getting old and deaf, brother, if you hear things that are not."

Haldir snorted, but climbed the bank nevertheless. His brother fell into step at his shoulder as they took a hidden path into the woods, heading north once more.

"The dreaming fool wants me to attend his wedding in midsummer…"

**Author's Notes: **"Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses." _Ovid_.

Best,

Marchwriter


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